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talk.politics.libertarian,alt.individualism
Subject: Re: Chomsky's bad faith proven:  the Khmer Rouge record
  [was  Re: Chomsky, was " If the left is understood to include
'Bolshevism,' then I would flatly dissociate myself from the
 left. Lenin was one of the greatestenemies of socialism, in my opin
From: fishe@merle.acns.nwu.edu (Carwil James)
Date: 23 Sep 1996 00:49:25 GMT

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Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
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In article <523mso$84h@news.acns.nwu.edu>,
Carwil James  wrote:
|In article <522jn6$4jd@news-central.tiac.net>,
|Hugo S. Cunningham  wrote:
||
||fishe@merle.acns.nwu.edu (Carwil James) wrote:
||
||>Hugo S. Cuningham writes:
||>|From the "Nation" article:
||>|
||>|"The 'slaughter' by the Khmer Rouge is a Moss-'New York Times'
||>|creation" (N., p. 792, column 1)
||
||>Here deletion of context is extremely important. To suggest that subject
||>here is the existence of a slaughter, rather than a particularly cited
||>report of slaughter is disingenuous at best. The quotes around slaughter
||>refer to a specific claim, rather than an attempt to write off all
||>allegations (which Herman and Chomsky admit may be true).
||
||>Here is the entire paragraph:
||
||>In the New York Times Magazine, May 1, 1977, Robert Moss (editor 
||>of a dubious offshoot of Britain's Economist called "Foreign Report" 
||>which specializes in sensational rumors from the world's
||>intelligence agencies) asserts that "Cambodia's pursuit of total 
||>revolution has resulted, by the official admission of its
||>Head of State, Khieu Samphan, in the slaughter of a million 
||>people." Moss informs us that the source of this statement is
||>Barron and Paul, who claim that in an interview with the Italian
||>weekly Famiglia Cristiana Khieu Samphan stated that more than a 
||>million died during the war, and that the population had been
||>7 million before the war and is now 5 million. Even if one places
||>some credence in the reported interview nowhere in it does
||>Khieu Samphan suggest that the million postwar deaths were a result
||>of official policies (as opposed to the lag effects of a
||>war that left large numbers ill, injured, and on the verge of 
||>starvation). The "slaughter" by the Khmer Rouge is a Moss-New York
||>Times creation. 
||
||I don't see that you've proven anything.  How many different times can
||the same million people be "slaughtered"?
|
|I don't think you've gotten the point of the paragraph. The official
|admits to the death of one million people in the post-war period. Given
|the level of destruction, many of these deaths are likely to be results
|of the US-bombing: destroyed civilian infrastructure, poor agricultural
|situation, etc. all result in deaths. At the same time, many of the 
|deaths were attributable to the Khmer Rouge regime. The Moss-NYT
|claim is that the population claim constituted a slaughter, and one
|that the Khmer Rouge admitted to. Moss & the NYT saw a population 
|decline and inferred a slaughter. Since their were many other reasons
|for population decline, this inference was clearly illegitimate. The
|claimed slaughter than was a creation of the authors.
|
|Now, were these million people slaughtered? Answer: some of them. 

I want to emphasize (I'm quoting myself in this article) that I recognize
the full extent of the KR run genocide, as researched by genocide
scholars. I lack the information to discriminate between Vickery's 740,000
death toll estimate and Kiernan's 1.5 million. Kiernan appears to make
credible points undercutting higher estimates. This covers the 1975-1979
figure. The million bandied about here is for 1975-76 or thereabouts. Even
with the facts, it seems unreasonable. My logic stands: not all of the
immediate post-war mortality is attributable to KR actions.

One must assume that KR responsibility for starvation deaths grew over the
course of its rule. Its responsibility for starvation deaths during the
immediate postwar period was clearly slight (because of the consequences
of US bombing). The estimates for deaths I cite include deaths from mass
starvation. I have no way of confirming the appropriateness of their
estimates on KR responsibility for starvation.

|Suppose that all of them had been killed by KR (which is not true).
|Moss did not have sufficient evidence for this conclusion. His
|allegations of slaughter would still have been artificial when he
|wrote them.
|
|Moreover, the purpose of the articles was an analysis of how 
|reporting is carried out, not an analysis of the human rights
|situation.
|
|    When the facts are in, it may turn out that the more extreme
|    condemnations were in fact correct. But even if that turns out
|    to be the case, it will in no way alter the conclusions we
|    have reached on the central question addressed here: how the
|    available facts were selected, modified, or sometimes invented
|    to create acertain image offered to the general population. The
|    answer to this question seems clear, and it is unaffected by
|    whatever may yet be discovered about Cambodia in the future.
|      (The Political Economy of Human Rights, Vol II, p. 293)
|
||Perhaps Chomsky should have said, "The confession to 'slaughter' by a
||Khmer Rouge leader was a Moss-'New York Times' invention," but that is
||not what he did say.
|
|It turns out that there was not a slaughter of one million people,
|encompassing the entire mortality of Cambodians since the end of US
|bombing. This was the NYT contention, the confession was a side note.

[during the period referred to]; just to avoid any confusion

Carwil James
--
 /\  / Chan | Fish-E Carwil James |    Seek Peace & Justice Everywhere     |
/o \/- bpen | Northwestern Univ.  | CTD '88, '89, '90, '91, '94, '95 '96   |
\/ /\- bplah| Class of '96  | "But there is | "Life's a beach and the tide |
 \/  \      |               |  no context"  |  just came in."  ~Osadczuk   | 

========
Newsgroups: alt.anarchism,alt.society.anarchy,talk.politics.theory,
talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.economics,alt.fan.noam-chomsky,
alt.politics.radical-left,alt.politics.libertarian,
talk.politics.libertarian,alt.individualism
Subject: Re: Chomsky's bad faith proven:  the Khmer Rouge record
  [was  Re: Chomsky, was " If the left is understood to include
'Bolshevism,' then I would flatly dissociate myself from the
 left. Lenin was one of the greatestenemies of socialism, in my opin
From: fishe@merle.acns.nwu.edu (Carwil James)
Date: 23 Sep 1996 05:40:19 GMT

In article <524tof$an2@news-central.tiac.net>,
Hugo S. Cunningham  wrote:
|ukeith@telerama.lm.com (Keith) wrote:
|
|>Hugo S. Cunningham (hcunn@tiac.net) wrote:
|[Keith:]
|>By the way, here are what some analyses done after the Vietnamese 
|>invasion found:
|
|>                    Executions              Total Dead
|
|>Finish Inquiry      75,000-100,000          1,000,000
|>Commission
|
|>Michael Vickery     200,000-300,000         750,000
|
|>The CIA             50,000-100,000          Unavailable
|
|>Carlyle Thayer      50,000-60,000           500,000
|
|Is a regime somehow less culpable for the peaceable civilians it
|uproots and sends to die of malnutrition, overwork, exposure, disease,
|beatings, and torture in concentration camps and uninhabitable
|wilderness?

Here (as in all other cases) culpability for deaths must be assigned based
on an assessment of the causes of those deaths. Now executions are a dead
giveaway. Overwork, beating and torture are similarly easily assigned.
For other deaths, we need to look at causes more carefully. Those deaths
caused by displacement and other actions enforced by the Khmer Rouge
should be included as part of the genocide. Mismanagement by the KR (of
agriculture, transportation, etc.) should not, though it reflects
unfavorably on the regime. Similarly, physical destruction and collapse of
civilian infrastructure resulting from the US bombing is the US's
responsibility.

A similar assessment must be made in East Timor. There, only one onslaught
on the civilian population occured. The killings, executions, and
concentrations of Timorese were part of an organized effort to control the
Timorese population. The deaths from them are thus the responsibilty of
the enforcing power, Indonesia.

|     Perhaps 10% of the 20 million Stalin is commonly accused of
|murdering were actually shot.  In Stalin's single greatest bloodbath,
|Collectivization (1929-33), his principal weapon was an artifical
|famine.  

And "artificial famine" qualifies as a weapon, and should be considered
genocidal when used as a way to destroy the population. However, the
existence of mass famine is not prima facie evidence of genocide (much of
it in Cambodia, did in fact constitute genocide -- but other evidence is
needed to support that conclusion). For instance, the 600,000 surplus
deaths among children in Iraq under sanctions do not represent genocide
because they are not being used in an attempt to destroy a population.
They do however constitute war crimes, should the rules of war be
considered applicable to the situation.

[vaid logic on Nazis deleted]

[remainder of article deleted]

Carwil James



--
 /\  / Chan | Fish-E Carwil James |    Seek Peace & Justice Everywhere     |
/o \/- bpen | Northwestern Univ.  | CTD '88, '89, '90, '91, '94, '95 '96   |
\/ /\- bplah| Class of '96  | "But there is | "Life's a beach and the tide |
 \/  \      |               |  no context"  |  just came in."  ~Osadczuk   | 

Go back to beginning of Chomsky/Khmer-Rouge debate.